Bitcoin Forum

Does someone know of a way to find the private key if I have 12-word phrase and the Receiving address?

Tried these:

- many combinations of derivation paths on BIP32 generator code
- export private keys from Electrum (it generated based on m/44'/0'/k'/0/i)

- xPub Scanner at https://blockpath.com/wallets/new?action=appxpub helped me scan through many possible derivation paths. But I still can only find the one that I already found, and the 0.91 BTC address was not listed. Very high chance now that the address I'd been using doesn't belong to my seed in the first place... how did it happen I can't explained


MAIN ISSUE: Might have been using another wallet all these while without realizing.

Assuming that I had indeed been using a new wallet all the while, and I do not have the 12-word phrase for this new wallet.....

SECOND HOPE: In total I had 3 phones that had MyCelium running

1st phone is still around, but factory reset before. How can I scan and try recover wallet data that hasn't been overwritten?

2nd phone was stolen recently

3rd phone, only bought it recently and it has 128GB, very low chance of any "sector" being overwritten. I only realize now that Google actually backed up my data and supposedly had recovered the data on my new phone. I'm guessing because I had not properly set up MyCelium yet, having those data sit in MyCelium folder alone wouldn't allow MyCelium to show the account info. So I went on to recover using the 12-word and found nothing. I uninstalled MyCelium a couple of times, but I'm hoping the first set of data "restored" by Google from backup is still lying around somewhere.

Few observations from memory and past screenshots:

1. I had 2 accounts. Under Accounts, there was something at "Other Account". It could be that my bitcoins were kept in the "Other Account" which I have no idea how it got there.
2. I am very sure I did not see the red "Missing Backup" prompt under my Accounts tab, but I only have one set of 12-word list.
3. I found a screenshot I took in Dec 2017 which proves that the account was a HD account due to the unique key icon as compared to a single key account's icon. Started changing to use the new receiving address between 13 Apr to 19 Apr 2016

How I could potentially recover my btc:

1. Recover walletbacking.db from an old phone which used to have MyCelium wallet working and showing my btc. Am still trying to figure out how to root Xiaomi 5 - stuck at one step which require me to wait 72 hrs
2. Recover walletbacking.db from Google Backup - since Google backs up apps, maybe they have this back up somewhere that I can retrieve? Found no help on this
3. Recover the first version of walletbacking.db from my current new phone, which was supposedly restored from google backup. Point (2) and (3) are only valid if Google Backup does indeed backs up the MyCelium android folder containing the crucial walletbacking.db


Questions to be answered:

1. Does Android's native Google Backup feature backs up walletbacking.db ? If it does, can we somehow contact Google to try retrieve a copy?
2. Is there a reliable data recovery method to perform on my Xiaomi 5 where the old walletbacking.db might have still yet to be overwritten despite factory reset?
3. Any other possibility why I only have one set of 12-word list, and yet I've been using a receiving address that doesn't seem to come from that seed? I tried many possible derivation paths already

Since you already have Electrum, the easiest way imho would be:
1. View->Show addresses
2. switch to addresses tab
3. wallet->find->type there the receiving address
4. when in list you have only one (the good) address, right click it and -> private key

AFAIK, the easiest way would be to go to the site:
https://iancoleman.io/bip39/

Save the site to your HD or USB and run it from an offline computer.

Enter your 12 word seed and then, lower on the page, select the address format that you need to match the recv address

(BIP32/44/49/84)

and it should give you your xpub, xprv, all recv addresses and related private keys

I think I just lost 1 BTC.... can't find any receiving address matching that...

Which means the 12-word phrase I have was for an older account.. and somehow I didn't know I had been using a "new" account.. it was 2.5 years ago I can't really remember, but I really don't remember using a new account at all!! :((

To be sure, try to make a new wallet in Electrum by restoring using your 12 words and then type this command:


If it returns true, it means that your address is there otherwise It's not.

Weird. I tried that, but it returns "false" for every address I tried, including TRUE addresses

don't complicate things for yourself with BIP32 and derivation paths and ...
instead try thinking where you got those "12 words" from. was it from a wallet that Electrum created for you automatically? or was it another wallet like a web wallet recovery phrase? or another desktop wallet? or was it a randomly chosen set of words by you which have nothing to do with seed, maybe a brain wallet?

if you can clarify where you got those words from then it is only a matter of going back to the same application that created t hose words and either importing them there or figuring out what scheme it uses to derive the keys.

based on your comments it doesn't seem to be a seed phrase.

the 12-word phrase are for sure valid, because I found some bitcoin with it.

I have only used 2 wallets before. Hivewallet , and then MyCelium.

I changed a receiving address around April 2016, which was about the same time Hivewallet was no longer available. The 12-word phrase was derived from Hivewallet and I remember restoring the backup to MyCelium using the 12-word phrase...

Update:

I tried to install older versions of MyCelium to try refresh my memory on what had happened when I started using the wallet.

Two things I can recall:

1. I had 2 accounts. Under Accounts, there was something at "Other Account". It could be that my bitcoins were kept in the "Other Account" which I have no idea how it got there.

2. I am very sure I did not see the red "Missing Backup" prompt under my Accounts tab.


How I could potentially recover my btc:

1. Recover walletbacking.db from an old phone which used to have MyCelium wallet working and showing my btc. Am still trying to figure out how to root Xiaomi 5 - stuck at one step which require me to wait 72 hrs
2. Recover walletbacking.db from Google Backup - since Google backs up apps, maybe they have this back up somewhere that I can retrieve? Found no help on this
3. Recover the first version of walletbacking.db from my current new phone, which was supposedly restored from google backup. Point (2) and (3) are only valid if Google Backup does indeed backs up the MyCelium android folder containing the crucial walletbacking.db


Any help would be appreciated

The derivation path for hive wallet is m/0'. So do the restore using electrum again (start via file > new/restore, enter unique filename and click next) and this time enter that derivation path. Make sure when entering the seed it says checksum ok next to the options buttion. That's how you know you've entered the bip39 mnemonic correctly (of course you have to click on options and check bip39 but I'm guessin you already know that?). If this works please let me know.

Source (https://www.reddit.com/r/btc/comments/4f788u/hive_wallet_help_reward_offered/d26upmk/) for derivation path. Note electrum will automatically add 0 or 1 for the external or internal chain so you have to enter m/0' and not m/0'/0 when restoring in electrum.

You said you know the receiving address: did you check it on a block explorer (https://www.blockchain.com/explorer)? Mycelium stores your PIN code as clear text, if the thief rooted the phone, he can transfer your funds.

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I like bob123's answer to this:

That seems really insecure. A 6 digit PIN hashed with a random salt would have been a much better idea, why would you store something in plain text?

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@op, I don't think Google backups of apps works too well in my experience. If the backup was likely on an SD card, pull out the card and open a command prompt and navigate to that drive using cd /d f:\ (with f being the drive letter in windows) or CD !media/drivename in Linux.

Then type
Windows: tree findstr "walletbacking.db"
Linux: tree | grep "walletbacking.db"

Yes, I found some coins at m/0'/0

I'm still missing 0.91 BTC at a certain receiving address - but i can't find this receiving address generated at all using the bip39 script with my 12-word list

But I am still hoping that the 0.91 BTC is in the same seed, just at a weird derivation path

The ismine command seems to only work on m/44'/0'/0'/0
It returned false for others such as BIP32 and BIP49

If anyone is searching for a match, and that the address has had received a coin before, then this search is more efficient: xPub Scanner at https://blockpath.com/wallets/new?action=appxpub

Can you try to open the google drive from here https://drive.google.com/drive/ login with your Gmail account which you use from your phone and let's see if you can find your files from google drive.

This is the only place that I know where you can find backup data from the phone according to Google.
Read this guide from google support https://support.google.com/android/answer/2819582?hl=en

If you restore your wallet electrum will do the necessary job of searching for addresses with balances in them. Restore by selecting bip39 in step 4 (see note) and using m/0' as the derivation path (not m/0'/0) in step 5 of this guide (https://bitcoinelectrum.com/restoring-your-standard-wallet-from-seed/).

Have you checked that address on a block explorer to confirm that the 0.91 BTC are actually still in said address? ???

Can you try m/0'/1 or m/0'/0/1 to see if it's on a change address if you haven't already?

I am pretty (even tho not completely) sure that internal files created by apps are not being backed up by google.
Don't you also have to explicitly tell android to backup your apps ?




The internal memory of a mobile phon is a flash memory. Performing recovery on them is not as easy as on a mechanical HD.

Besides some basic file recovery software, there isn't much you can do.
Did you already try some out? (Enabling USB debugging -> connecting to your computer -> running file recovery software)




Eventually only if you have added an additional password to your seed (which is not possible in mycelium i believe).

If you had your funds on a different 'account' inside of mycelium, this usually just results in an index being increased.

Which derivation paths did you already try out ?

Info taken from : https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=965932.0

Try deriving from m/44'/0'/1'/0 or m/44'/0'/2'/0 since according to the link this fits your description of having an "Other account" in the same wallet.

Since you were on android theres also mention of using m/44'/0'/0' instead of the other one, if that doesnt work i guess that implies you should try m/44'/0'/1' and so on.

I'd say finding the correct derivation path is the easiest way for you to pull this off, just look around on which was used to generate your addresses.

It's not a mycelium wallet. It's a hive wallet that he's trying to restore in other wallet software. OP hasn't replied so I'm guessing either the problem is solved or he doesn't care anymore.